Don't cheerlead lawsuits unless you've got moral justification. From my (admittedly limited) point of view, it seems to me that the AMD vs. Intel war has been rather civil.
While there could be some hidden details that damn Intel, odds are Apple chose the fastest processor available at the time. This isn't terribly anti-competitive. After all, antitrust has nothing to do with "They're bigger than us! Wah! Wah!", and everything to do with "They're bigger than us and they're playing dirty because of their position!"
What did you hope to achieve through this message? You've failed to make the parent look stupid, you've failed to make a reasonable point, and you've failed to fling an insult his way.
Maybe I'm just getting too old for slashdot, but I remember when trolls at least made an effort to appear reasonably intelligent.
Google isn't a public service. When they say they "Can't filter", it's likely because it sends them down a slippery slope towards being unable to run a search engine. Ok, let's get rid of thte cracks. Now the warez. Now all the strange misspellings of those two. Well Jesus, thare are a billion pages on Google. To go through each one to make sure it's not illegal somehow would require trolling the entire internet.
In ths case, we're not talking about filtering individual web pages but suggested search terms. Sure, they could filter those too, technologically. However, we get the same problem; It's going to mean some poor sap going through each search term and trying find the offensive or illegal ones. They could try just filtering some terms, but then you get things like this, with them being called hypocrites.
In the end, between the additional logistics required to filter every time someone complains and the additional drain on computer resources to do so, it's a more acceptable business decision to get the whiney people to go away than to try to appease them.
You know, the number of people on slashdot who'll jump on someone for not referring to every customer with sunshine coming out of their asshole is absolutely sickening.
It doesn't matter whether it's waiterblog or gasjockeyblog or applecareblog -- The customer has a certain role, and when you step beyond that role, you're going to leave a bad impression. It has nothing to do with being technically incapable, and everything to do with being an asshole. Sure, having to decipher a thousand dialects of stupid is unfortunate, but it's the pretentious asshole lambasting some poor helpdesk tech beause his "mission critical" machine has no backups and just failed is no different than the stories on the waiterblog about assholes who think they deserve a reserved table because they're "special" and drop all pretenses of humanity while dealing with their waiter, or the asshole trucker who thinks the gas jockey is their personal verbal punching bag.
I bought a 30GB external USB hard drive with a little button in it the other week for about 70 dollars canadian. After I install the software, whenever I press the little black button on it, it'll back up my hard drive automatically.
And the guy sucked at it because the most important part of being a good support guy/girl is to be able to get the customer to trust you and let you help themt.
And they're quite right.
Irrelevant to the original posters thesis, however. You can feel contempt for those calling in and still earn their trust, and even continue to act friendly.
It doesn't matter how much you love your job, or how much you respect your customers; "A different dialect of stupid" is an inescapable truism.
Simply, there are a lot of times when you'll get calls from wonderful or horrible people, and the challenge isn't in fixing their problem, but in communicating with them -- because their words for everything have no bearing on the words everyone else uses.
One example is when they confidentally use words wrong, for example, I recall one or two times back when I worked in helpdesk support that I'd misdiagnose a problem because the caller would tell me "The CPU is doing X", and thinking that the processor was in dire straights, I'd have them ship the machine back, only to realize that they were talking about the computer case (usually the CPU).
It doesn't mean you don't respect or like your callers, but it is very much a "different dialect of stupid" -- they may be wonderful people, but they are ignorant of computers.
I've decided to sound the death knell of this discussion.
"Rights enshrined in the Constitution do not include the privacy of your phone records. (I'm talking about records of the numbers to/from which calls were made, not the content of the calls.) If you don't believe me, see what the U.S. Supreme Court had to say in Smith v. Maryland [findlaw.com]." -them
"You're absolutely right. I didn't think about it until after I'd posted, but the issue at stake is that the law was broken because the searches were done without a court order, not because of any particular constitutional right."-SJ
Those who do not read will be doomed forever to argue against points that weren't made.
I did no such thing. You are arguing against a position I have not taken.
Of course you have police forces and intelligence agencies out there to be forever vigilant against people who would want to harm us. It doesn't mean we should fear those who would harm us, but here we are, acting like cowards all the time.
What if I don't believe in charity, because people in third world countries need to fix the socioeconomic problems before any amount of money in the world will help them, because drug companies will make billions on the drugs discovered using your donations, and because 'poor' kids don't need to be sent to fat camp with donated money?
What are you talking about? A 1Ghz Athlon or P3 with a Geforce 3 would happily run most games today.
It's a strange lie that you need a "gaming PC" to play games. I'm able to play any game on the market with my bottom-of-the-line Dell and a reasonable PCI video card with appropriate shader support.
False dichotomy? Sorry. No false dichotomy here. "To be frank, I'm disgusted by the entire western world for acting like such cowards during all of this."
We have lots of enemies. We don't act like a bunch of scared children when we think about most of them.
Now, really. Would you be comfortable saying that exact same thing to any of the tens of thousands of direct parents/children/siblings of people actually killed by these "non-special" people in New York, Bali, Madrid, or London? Face to face?
Yes. I would.
The more you fear this enemy, the more power they have. If you decide that it's worth fearing terrorists because you lost a loved one in a terrorist attack, then you're pissing on their graves.
Slashdot Mirror
This is news? Why do slashdotters insist on being Microsofts best advertisers by spreading this shit around?
Don't cheerlead lawsuits unless you've got moral justification. From my (admittedly limited) point of view, it seems to me that the AMD vs. Intel war has been rather civil.
While there could be some hidden details that damn Intel, odds are Apple chose the fastest processor available at the time. This isn't terribly anti-competitive. After all, antitrust has nothing to do with "They're bigger than us! Wah! Wah!", and everything to do with "They're bigger than us and they're playing dirty because of their position!"
"O MY GOSH U R A SMART SHOPPER"
What did you hope to achieve through this message? You've failed to make the parent look stupid, you've failed to make a reasonable point, and you've failed to fling an insult his way.
Maybe I'm just getting too old for slashdot, but I remember when trolls at least made an effort to appear reasonably intelligent.
Google isn't a public service. When they say they "Can't filter", it's likely because it sends them down a slippery slope towards being unable to run a search engine. Ok, let's get rid of thte cracks. Now the warez. Now all the strange misspellings of those two. Well Jesus, thare are a billion pages on Google. To go through each one to make sure it's not illegal somehow would require trolling the entire internet.
In ths case, we're not talking about filtering individual web pages but suggested search terms. Sure, they could filter those too, technologically. However, we get the same problem; It's going to mean some poor sap going through each search term and trying find the offensive or illegal ones. They could try just filtering some terms, but then you get things like this, with them being called hypocrites.
In the end, between the additional logistics required to filter every time someone complains and the additional drain on computer resources to do so, it's a more acceptable business decision to get the whiney people to go away than to try to appease them.
You know, the number of people on slashdot who'll jump on someone for not referring to every customer with sunshine coming out of their asshole is absolutely sickening.
It doesn't matter whether it's waiterblog or gasjockeyblog or applecareblog -- The customer has a certain role, and when you step beyond that role, you're going to leave a bad impression. It has nothing to do with being technically incapable, and everything to do with being an asshole. Sure, having to decipher a thousand dialects of stupid is unfortunate, but it's the pretentious asshole lambasting some poor helpdesk tech beause his "mission critical" machine has no backups and just failed is no different than the stories on the waiterblog about assholes who think they deserve a reserved table because they're "special" and drop all pretenses of humanity while dealing with their waiter, or the asshole trucker who thinks the gas jockey is their personal verbal punching bag.
A good job, perhaps, but I doubt anyone thinks it would make a good career.
I bought a 30GB external USB hard drive with a little button in it the other week for about 70 dollars canadian. After I install the software, whenever I press the little black button on it, it'll back up my hard drive automatically.
It only cost me about 70 bucks CDN,
"Ok, now press the mouse button."
"Which mouse button?"
"There's only one."
Obviously, the knowledge to know a good caller from a bad one requires you to know how to solve an issue without the helpdesk knowledge database. ;p
And the guy sucked at it because the most important part of being a good support guy/girl is to be able to get the customer to trust you and let you help themt.
And they're quite right.
Irrelevant to the original posters thesis, however. You can feel contempt for those calling in and still earn their trust, and even continue to act friendly.
It doesn't matter how much you love your job, or how much you respect your customers; "A different dialect of stupid" is an inescapable truism.
Simply, there are a lot of times when you'll get calls from wonderful or horrible people, and the challenge isn't in fixing their problem, but in communicating with them -- because their words for everything have no bearing on the words everyone else uses.
One example is when they confidentally use words wrong, for example, I recall one or two times back when I worked in helpdesk support that I'd misdiagnose a problem because the caller would tell me "The CPU is doing X", and thinking that the processor was in dire straights, I'd have them ship the machine back, only to realize that they were talking about the computer case (usually the CPU).
It doesn't mean you don't respect or like your callers, but it is very much a "different dialect of stupid" -- they may be wonderful people, but they are ignorant of computers.
Please, just stop talking. You're wasting bandwidth. You aren't even capable of talking about points I've actually made.
If you just want to hear yourself type, go get a blog like the rest of us.
Oops, I fail. it's the link right there.
However, I still win, becayse you fscking morons are arguing against a position I long conceeded was incorrect.
"There is not constitutional protection!" -them
"Oh man, you're right! That was never the issue!" -SJ
I've decided to sound the death knell of this discussion.
"Rights enshrined in the Constitution do not include the privacy of your phone records. (I'm talking about records of the numbers to/from which calls were made, not the content of the calls.) If you don't believe me, see what the U.S. Supreme Court had to say in Smith v. Maryland [findlaw.com]." -them
"You're absolutely right. I didn't think about it until after I'd posted, but the issue at stake is that the law was broken because the searches were done without a court order, not because of any particular constitutional right."-SJ
Those who do not read will be doomed forever to argue against points that weren't made.
I did no such thing. You are arguing against a position I have not taken.
Of course you have police forces and intelligence agencies out there to be forever vigilant against people who would want to harm us. It doesn't mean we should fear those who would harm us, but here we are, acting like cowards all the time.
What if I don't believe in charity, because people in third world countries need to fix the socioeconomic problems before any amount of money in the world will help them, because drug companies will make billions on the drugs discovered using your donations, and because 'poor' kids don't need to be sent to fat camp with donated money?
It's odd that Freedom never comes into the equation.
Pontifex, one of my favourite games, would never have come out on any of the three systems. I'm positive others have similar experiences.
What are you talking about? A 1Ghz Athlon or P3 with a Geforce 3 would happily run most games today.
It's a strange lie that you need a "gaming PC" to play games. I'm able to play any game on the market with my bottom-of-the-line Dell and a reasonable PCI video card with appropriate shader support.
You are someone to be laughed in perpetuity.
"Gee willickers! I can get laid if I buy a ps2!"
And that's just what the iPod delivers: seamless integration to both your computer environment, and to your life.
That's Apple iPod(tm)(c)(all rights reserved) -- a good good goodness.
Ok, where's my bag of money? You guys obviously gave this dude one. I want mine.
Why would there be more stress hormones in veal than in regular beef?
You fail. I am the initiator of this thread, and no such link exists. Have a nice day.
False dichotomy? Sorry. No false dichotomy here. "To be frank, I'm disgusted by the entire western world for acting like such cowards during all of this."
We have lots of enemies. We don't act like a bunch of scared children when we think about most of them.
Now, really. Would you be comfortable saying that exact same thing to any of the tens of thousands of direct parents/children/siblings of people actually killed by these "non-special" people in New York, Bali, Madrid, or London? Face to face?
Yes. I would.
The more you fear this enemy, the more power they have. If you decide that it's worth fearing terrorists because you lost a loved one in a terrorist attack, then you're pissing on their graves.
Please reference the court case you're referring to.